"China is now the place to be," says EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in Beijing on Wednesday.

Geoghegan-Quinn says at China's renowned Tsinghua University, which just celebrated its 100th birthday and houses a Europe-China Clean Energy Center on its campus, that EU is encouraging more students to come to China. "For centuries, we Europeans have been fascinated by Chinese ingenuity and invention - indeed since the time of Marco Polo."

She calls for more collaboration between European and Chinese researchers because no one country can hope to solve major challenges alone such as food and energy security, climate change, disaster management, and nuclear safety.

China has positioned itself as EU's third international partner, after the USA and Russia in terms of EU's 7th's Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7).

In turning EU into an Innovation Union Flagship, FP7 is the world's largest public programme for research, investing more than 55 billion euros between 2007 and 2013 in areas such as agriculture, ICT, nanotechnology, biotechnology, health, transport, energy, environment and climate change.

So far Chinese researchers have received 23.7 million euros in funding from the EU under FP7.